The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists

Starred review from October 3, 2011
Although published after Seth’s wondrously satirical look at the ossified nostalgia of the world of comics’ collectors in Wimbledon Green, this similarly styled work was mostly created earlier. It’s an initially chirpy but eventually downbeat narrative by a member of the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, an august if imaginary guild and tradesmen’s club that has fallen on the same hard times as most other fraternal organizations. Seth uses this superbly drawn narrative tour of one of the G.N.B. Double C’s meeting halls as an excuse for some grand mythmaking and wish fulfillment. In this alternate universe, Canadian cartoonists were once the toast of the land, billboards advertising their work, and posh meeting halls in city after city offering plush armchairs and work cubicles for their diligent and productive members. The book’s haunting nostalgia for something that never existed—a curiously effective way of damning the present reality—includes lengthy and engrossing exegesis of many imaginary Canadian cartoons. By the time Seth threatens to pull the rug out from under you, he has you convinced that such a golden era of popular success and imagination could have existed; more important, he convinces you that it should have.

December 15, 2011
A sort-of companion piece to Wimbledon Green (2005), in which he limned a fictional history of comic-book collectors, Seth's latest effort postulates an alternate universe set in a Canada where lionized cartoonists were viewed as important cultural figures, with membership in a prestigious guild, the G. N. B. Double C. of the book's title. A largely unseen narrator leads a tour of the league's expansive headquarters, now in disrepair but once the scene of clubby meetings of the nation's cartoonistsa few genuine, but most contrived entirely by Seth, who details their careers with loving care, presenting lengthy samples of such colorful creations as Kao-Kuk the Inuit astronaut and patriotic superhero Canada Jack. The work's deceptive modestySeth's drawings are uncharacteristically casual, and he limits himself to an unvarying grid of nine uniformly sized panelsbelies its impressive accomplishment, creating a fully realized world in which cartoonists receive the respect they're denied in ours. Seth treats his profession with the same mix of affection and inventiveness that marked Guy Maddin's wry mockumentary film about his Canadian hometown, My Winnipeg.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)